Few wars have a more misleading name than the Crimean War. Far from being a local conflict, fought in the Black Sea peninsula from which the name derives, hostilities took place in many different areas of the globe. Major military operations, largely between Turks (siding with Britain and France) and Russians, occurred in the Balkans and the Caucasus, and a considerable naval effort was made by the British and French to prosecute the war against Russia in the Baltic and Black seas, and also in the Far East and the Pacific (Stephan 1969). The war even reached North America; elements of the Royal Navy reconnoitred Russian settlements in Alaska in 1855 (Tyrrell 1856, 2: 355).

This paper presents a simple model of processes by which soils develop in polar and high-altitude regions. It reviews influences of seasonal freezing, permafrost, and vegetation on soil formation; discusses recently formulated concepts of disturbance and damage; and draws attention to developments in remediation, especially possibilities for encouraging natural soil regeneration and rehabilitation processes.

During the first International Polar Year (1882–1883) the French expedition to Bahia Orange, Hoste Island, Tierra del Fuego carried out a series of 39 measurements of concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These were supplemented by 6 measurements during the return voyage to Cherbourg. In addition 20 similar measurements were made at 4 stations in the northern hemisphere and 17 at 3 stations in the southern hemisphere that were participating in the transit of Venus observations.

In the early years of Soviet power, expeditions to the Barents and Kara Seas were organized, and this laid the foundations of navigation between the European part of the Soviet Union and the Siberian rivers Ob' and Yenisey. In the course of these voyages great quantities of goods were carried across the Arctic seas, which were to become important in the country's economy.

Since the Antarctic Treaty was negotiated in 1959, it has undergone major substantive legal transformations as it grew into a multifaceted regime known as the Antarctic Treaty system. Many of those transformations stemmed from actions by the principal decision makers, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs), as they adopted new strategies and values alongside binding legal agreements for managing their activities in circumpolar southern waters. This essay examines the evolution of the modern law of the sea and seeks to explain how it embellished (has it at times challenged?) the character, significance and purposes of the Antarctic Treaty.

Aleksandr Stepanovich Kuchin (1888–1912) was already an experienced mariner and oceanographer when Amundsen invited him to join the Fram expedition of 1910–12. Expecting a voyage through the Barents Sea, Kuchin found himself on an expedition to the Antarctic. While Amundsen's sledging parties sought the South Pole, Kuchin remained with the ship, completing an excellent oceanographic survey of the southern Atlantic Ocean. Returning to Russia in 1912 he was recruited, by the geologist and explorer V. A. Rusinov to join a scientific expedition to Svalbard. As deputy leader of the party and captain of Gerkules, the expedition ship, Kuchin played an important role in the Svalbard survey. Then once again found himself heading in an unexpected direction: on completing the Svalbard work, Rusanov decided to attempt the Northern Sea Route to the Bering Strait. Gerkules disappeared and was never seen again; her loss, presumably in the Kara Sea, brought to an untimely end the career of a promising young polar explorer.

Africa has been marginalised in the history of Antarctica, a politics of exclusion (with the exception of Apartheid South Africa) reflected unsurprisingly by a dearth of imaginative, cultural and literary engagement. But, in addition to paleontological and geophysical links, Antarctica has increasing interrelationship with Africa’s climactic future. Africa is widely predicted to be the continent worst affected by climate change, and Antarctica and its surrounding Southern Ocean are uniquely implicated as crucial mediators for changing global climate and currents, rainfall patterns, and sea level rise. This paper proposes that there are in fact several ways of imagining the far South from Africa in literary and cultural terms. One is to read against the grain for southern-directed perspectives in existing African literature and the arts, from southern coastlines looking south; another is to reexamine both familiar and new, speculative narratives of African weather – drought, flood and change – for their Antarctic entanglements. In the context of ongoing work on postcolonial Antarctica and calls to decolonise Antarctic studies – such readings can begin to bridge the Antarctica–Africa divide.

Further information is presented relating to a sledge discovered on Byers Peninsula, Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands in 2007.

Landsat images of northern Axel Heiberg Island and northern Ellesmere Island, including part of the Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve in the Canadian high Arctic, are presented. These are believed to be the first Landsat images ever to be obtained of this region, which is north of latitude 80°N and once thought to be beyond the meaningful imaging range of Landsat. A general description of glaciological phenomena in the almost cloud-free images, and some of the attributes of the Ellesmere Island National Park Reserve, demonstrates some of the features and processes that can be imaged by Landsat in the region. New findings concerning the state and position of the front of the surge-type Otto Glacier, icebergs in Otto Fiord, and the extent and surface morphology of the Nansen Ice Plug indicate the capabilities of Landsat to contribute to original glaciological research in the region.

This is the first in a series of biographies entitled ‘Children of the Golden Age’, the purpose of which is to describe the background and contributions of a number of significant living figures in polar research, all of whom began their scientific careers and earned their Antarctic spurs in the years following World War II. Bernard Stonehouse was born in Hull on 1 May 1926. Joining the Royal Navy in 1944, he trained as a pilot, and in 1946–50 served as meteorologist, second pilot, dog-sledger, and ultimately biologist with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, mainly from Base E, Stonington Island, Antarctic Peninsula. His first biological investigation was a winter study of breeding emperor penguins. Returning to Britain in 1950 he read zoology and geology at University College, London. Doctoral research at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology and Merton College, Oxford, involved an 18-month field study of king penguins on South Georgia. Between 1960 and 1968, as senior lecturer, later reader, in zoology, at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, he continued Antarctic and sub-Antarctic research in McMurdo Sound and on the New Zealand southern islands. A Commonwealth Research Fellowship at the University of British Columbia, 1970–71, gave him opportunities for research in the Yukon. After developing undergraduate and postgraduate studies in environmental science at the University of Bradford, 1972–83, he joined the Scott Polar Research Institute as editor of Polar Record, thereafter forming the Institute's Polar Ecology and Management Group, and heading a long-term study on the ecological impacts of polar tourism. At SPRI he continues to combine the two factors that have always played an important part in his life: working in polar regions and communicating with the general public on issues of biology, the environment, and conservation.

Glacial Crooked Lake was an ice-dammed impoundment in Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica, that had a volume of (250 ± 45) × 10 m. The impoundment is inferred to have existed during deglaciation following the Late Holocene Chelnok Advance of Sørsdal Glacier. The dam released water incrementally, allowing the formation of four major series of shorelines with a maximum height of 24 m above the current lake level of 22 m asl. Water from Glacial Crooked Lake overflowed into Watts Lake downstream, allowing saltwater there to mix, dilute, and be transported to the sea via Ellis Rapids. In this way water in Watts Lake became fresh, and alluvial fans consisting of cobbles and boulders formed below Crooked Lake and Ellis Rapids.

This note considers the decision by the UK government to rename the southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula - Queen Elizabeth Land. Named in honour of the UK Head of State, it was intended to be a ‘gift’ recognising her Diamond Jubilee. However, the 169,000 square mile territory in question is counter-claimed by Argentina and Chile. The circumstances surrounding this declaration, in December 2012, reveals both the contested politics of Antarctic place naming, and a growing willingness of the UK government to strengthen its ‘strategic presence’ in the Antarctic and wider South Atlantic/Falkland Islands region. This naming event provoked Argentina to issue a formal protest note to the UK Ambassador to Argentina.

Significant warming in the Arctic is anticipated for doubled-CO2 scenarios, but temperatures in the eastern Canadian Arctic have not yet exhibited that trend in the last few decades. The spatial juxtaposition of the winter station in 1822–1823 of William Edward Parry's Northwest Passage expedition with the modern Igloolik Research Centre of the Science Institute of the Northwest Territories affords an opportunity for historical reconstruction and comparison. Parry's data are internally consistent. The association of colder temperatures with westerly and northerly winds, and wanner temperatures with easterly and southerly winds, is statistically significant. Temperatures are not exactly comparable between the two time periods because of differences in instrumentation, exposure, and frequency of readings. Nevertheless, in 1822–1823, November and December appear to have been cold and January to March mild compared to modern experience. Anomalously, winds were more frequently northerly (and less frequently westerly) in the latter months than in recent observations. Parry recorded two warm episodes in mid-winter, but, overall, it appears that the winter of 1822–1823 was not outside the range of modern experience.